Secular Campuses and Their Challenges

I am from Jackson Ms, where I grew up in a family of faith. We have been going to the same Baptist church even before I was born. This is how I was raised. I went to the same school from 4 year old kindergarden to 12th grade. The school I attended was an Academy school in south Jackson. The title was Hillcrest Christian School. As you can see, I am a Christian and have been taught nothing else. Since my early high school years, I really started to see what my school was all about. We had an entire class that was taught about the readings of the Bible. Every week, we as a school met in the basketball gym and had what we called Chapel. This was a time where our entire school which consisted of the 6th graders and up, joining in on a ministry that our administrators set up. This involved everything from Preachers coming to do a sermon, to Christian bands coming to do performances for us. This was a major part of my life and was somthing that I took so much pride in.

As far as my schooling was concerned, I knew nothing about the different "theories" that we are taught here at Ole Miss. For some however, these "theories" are truth to many individuals. This was something that I had to become aware of. From my first class of Geology 101, the things that were being taught made little sense to me as I was taught strictly from the Bible. I had to have the opinion of the material from the Geology class as being something was wasn't necessarily true but was a theory. I can see that many individuals were brought up in the teachings of the material that I was exposed to. However, for me this was not the case. I began doing some research to how a professor should go about teaching material that can be either accepted or denied.

I found this article that talks about the challenges that students face on secular campuses such as Ole Miss. By the way, I am amazing surprised of the amount of Christianity that I see in the college. From church goers to extra curricular organizations involving Christian Ministry, there is a widespread among this town. So, back to my discussion. How should teachers and professors go about conducting a class with the material being very opinionated. Well, from this article I found 2 ways. The 2 approaches would be Banishment and Confrontation. When looking back on my classes of Liberal Arts, the teachings would be better suited for me if it were in the approach of Banishment. "The banishment approach is, of course, the more venerable and the less aggressive of the two. A science professor will state at the beginning of the semester: "Science involves the gathering and analysis of data as the basis for forming hypotheses regarding the nature of reality. It must, therefore, exclude any reference to the supernatural as out of bounds for scientific inquiry. Whether or not God exists, or angels, fairies, pixies, goblins, or the Boogie Man is irrelevant to scientific investigation. Hold to your religious or superstitious beliefs if you want to, but don't bring them up in this classroom. It is off the subject; we don't have time for theological debates here."

This approach would be suited when the teaching would be of something that could be true but should leave the student involved in their own beliefs.

The 2nd approach is the confrontation approach where the professor will actually challenge everything that an individual believes in currently. It could be Christianity or any other belief but will teach under the assumption that the material is the truth. "A more recent and increasingly popular approach in the university classroom is to take the creationist bull by the horns and attack belief in the God of the Bible by any possible means. This is the strategy of journals such as Creation/Evolution and The Skeptical Inquirer. Professors claim the mechanistic/materialistic explanation for origins removes all need for God. Naturalists in the classroom are not above using illogical arguments to win over their students."

So the argument of why students are becoming Atheists comes about. For me, I didn't have a hard time because I chose to learn about and not believe in the different theories that are being taught. I can obviously see how students are guided in different directions that come from a different background as me. Honestly, I have witnessed it in a few cases. So this subject is very opinionated and will be studied for years to come.